The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5: 1936-1941

The Diary of Virginia Woolf #5

by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was fifty-four on January 25, 1936, some three weeks after this final volume of her diary opens. Its last page was written four days before she drowned herself on March 28, 1941. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie; Index; maps.

Genres: Nonfiction, Diary, Biography, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Classics, Autobiography

402 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Reviews

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 5 out of 5]

And just like that, the final diary ends. Five books packed with the intimate thoughts, observations, and feelings of one of the best writers of all time, who after so much immersion in these journals feels somehow much closer, Virginia. The journey I began with her by picking up A Writer's Diary at Persephone Books in 2017 now draws to a close.

One of the main things I've learned about Virginia in my years of reading is that reducing her to her death is deeply unfair and simplistic. For one, I always was under the impression she died young; likely due to that ghostly photo that people always choose to accompany her works. Virginia lived to the age of 59. Despite intense, often debilitating, depression (possibly bipolar disorder), and several spots in life where she was struggling intensely with suicidal feeling, Virginia lived six decades. In the years up to her death, World War II was in full swing, and the possibility of death came with every day as London and its surroundings were bombed. She and Leonard had plans for suicide if the Germans invaded or looked like they were to win. She always sunk into her worst feelings just after finishing a novel, which she did that winter (her last). But just months before her death, in one of her final diary entries, she wrote, “This trough of despair shall not, I swear, engulf me.”

Virginia Woolf wrote about her works, her friends, her life, her gossip, in these journals. She comes into life, vividly. The final volume also has a lot of value for seeing what it was like to live near London at the beginning of World War II. Finishing these journals leaves me with an empty, grieving feeling, like losing the words of a friend. The good news is, like Virginia always said, there is so, so much more to read: her autobiography, a few scattered shorter works I haven't read, and always, the best and favorites to reread.

[Carolyn Whitzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third time I've read Virginia Woolf's diaries. What struck me this time around is how fiercely she loved life, and what a great relationship she had with Leonard. Yes, she was a sometimes nasty, petty, racist, anti-Semitic, snob. But her diaries also give an unparalleled sense of an era and a set of intellectuals who still matter. I am grateful that she shared her life as she was living it.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Insights into a writer's mind but also someone struggling with a mental illness and her focussed way of managing and analysing it. Recommended reading alongside her novels and other Bloomsbury lives and books where her diary gives insight into that whole milieu. I'm now tempted to invest in the six volumes of letters even though that will be a big expense of time and money. It's a world worth spending time in as it repays and repays.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad to finish this, with its abrupt end. Covers the years leading up to the war, and then the outbreak of war and full-time removal to Sussex. Her nephew is killed in the Spanish Civil War and there are other deaths ; she continues to write and publish, and it is the completion of her last novel which seems to have tipped her over the edge, despite the encouragement of those around her and despite her husband and sister both trying to get help for her.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

- the 1930s, Ms. Woolf’s final full decade, continue her literary output while facing the loss of friends (Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry) and family (nephew Julian Bell) - The Waves, The Years, and Between the Acts are her final novels - so sad as one approaches the coming of World War II and how it will affect Ms. Woolf’s stability - but the creative, insightful, and witty spirit is visible throughout -

[Amy Christine Lesher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was not an easy book to read. I started it last year and put it aside a few times to read something else. I knew that at the end of this book Woolf would have committed suicide. What I didn't expect was how difficult the last year of her life was: the war and bombings that accompanied it, the talk about suicide she and Leonard had (if the Germans had taken England Leonard had purchased extra gas.) Such a difficult book to read and yet, I'm glad I did.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather eerie reading Woolf's account of the building tensions towards WW2, onset of war, and growing risk of invasion-- the ever-present menace of the old fascism.

[Ari (Head in a Book) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact a few days after writing the last entry in this volume , Virginia Woolf drowned herself makes this an unsettling read.

[Brok3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

The longest suicide note ever written

This will be a review of the entire unabridged Diary -- five volumes. My review title is stolen from some more insightful reader of Virginia Woolf's Diary -- I don't remember where I saw it, unfortunately, so can't give proper credit.

There are several interesting stories told in here. For instance, it is the story of her Bloomsbury group of friends and artists. Aside from Woolf herself, most of these were rather dull people, with one major exception: economist John Maynard Keynes, truly a brilliant man, possessor of what The Indigo Girls call "a mind without end". (They are referring to Woolf herself with the phrase, but I am repurposing it.)

And then there is the story of the Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard (also an author) purchased a printing press and became a small publishing business, to my mind one of the most inspiring business success stories of all time.

But the central story of the Diary is the story of Woolf's psychological downward spiral. I would guess she suffered from what we now call Major Depression -- at the time it was probably called Melancholia. She began each new book with enthusiasm, happy to be starting something new. But then, as she passed the middle, the book would become a crushing burden, that she struggled to finish. And after the publication, regular as clockwork, the crash. You would think that publication and success would be a triumph, but that is not how depression works. Even winning feels like losing.

It is terrifying to read, because as you get along in the Diary it becomes clear that each crash is worse than the one before. And you know that, inevitably, she will one day finish a book, then walk into the river.

Blog review.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

بخش هایی از این کتاب قطور را بصورت دنباله دار در مجله ی "هفت" با ترجمه ی اسلامی دیده ام. آیا بعدن بصورت کتاب منتشر شده است؟

[B.A. Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a poignant read as it leads up to when Virginia left a note, walked to the river, and drowned herself.